As in all technology related businesses, the U.S. Department of Defense is faced with many difficult decisions in choosing methods of upgrading current control systems to keep pace with technology while operating within ever tightening budget constraints. Realistic assessments of these decisions indicate that wholesale replacement of electronic systems currently used will be impossible. It is therefore necessary to explore novel ways of selectively inserting advanced capabilities and technologies into existing systems to thereby extend the useful life of the overall system while increasing its technical capability. The most cost effective way to accomplish this is to utilize non-development items that are readily available/used in the commercial world. Unfortunately, many of the military's current combat systems are based on proprietary equipment designed and built for specific applications.
In the U.S. Navy, many of these proprietary systems are arranged in a centralized architecture having many point-to-point interconnections. For example, as shown in FIG. 1, the current generation Navy standard shipboard computer 10 (UYK-43) is point-to-point connected to a plurality of specially designed AN/UYQ-21(V) workstations or consoles 30 by means of a specially designed central data buffer 20. Central data buffer 20 passes commands, data and status information between computer 10 and consoles 30. This configuration limits the Navy's options when it comes to system upgrade since each component of the system involves expensive proprietary equipment.